Day Two It Rained!

And that was a Good Thing!

We woke up yesterday morning (after all the fire shenanigans at 4am) to low gray clouds which eventually turned into light drizzly rain. It hung around most of the day and seeing as we'd packed mainly for the glorious Wellington summer we'd been hearing about, we ended up spending most of the day at the apartment, getting busy on the phone and booking times to go meet my new bosses up at Sprott House, to have Livi assessed at WHS and finally, to view our first potential apartment here in Welly which we did last night at six (more on that below).

Mid-afternoon, I grabbed a gap in the weather and speed-walked two blocks down to Cuba Street Mall which is one of the oldest thoroughfares in Welly, and which features a fascinating and funky collection of shops, cafes, bookstores - in fact, anything you could possibly want you'll probably find there. I went to Farmers, a house-and-garden kind of store where I bought an umbrella, pair of closed shoes and a beautiful warm autumn jacket!

At 6pm, we walked down - no first, we walked UP then down! - to 126 The Terrace, where we saw a teeny, tiny apartment on the third floor. Although it was reasonably priced, fully furnished and within walking distance of Lambton Quay, the cable car and the waterfront, we both had an instinctive NO to it: it was a dismally soulless place and looked out onto nothing but other tall apartment buildings. Welly has so much to offer and we are still so new to it - I think we'll probably look at a LOT of places before we find the one that says YES! :-)

OK, now piccy update. A lot of you have asked for Welly pix, so here are a few random shots, mainly from where we are staying now, which is on the corner of Willis and Ghuznee.

Looking down Ghuznee Str - on the left, a high rise apartment building, on the right a beautiful old church with a parking space set aside for the Vicar!


Looking back up Ghuznee - a cool mix of high rises and small houses ...

Close up of some of those houses ....

Inside the apartment ... sleeping on Day One!

This is the link to the ad for the apartment we viewed yesterday - it's on TradeMe, which is THE online shopping site for Kiwis - just like Gumtree and Craigslist, but (imho) even better! I now have a watchlist of about twelve other potential rentals which I need to start pursuing today .. so watch this space for updates!

Love to everyone back home and elsewhere!
L&L